


Ignition

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 11:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11335137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: By Te, Alicia and DBKate. Yet another The End/office fire fic.





	Ignition

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Ignition by DB Kate, Alicia, and Te

X/Story: 7 July 1998  
Archive/X: 12 July 1998

IGNITION  
by DB Kate, Alicia, and Te  
6/98  
Disclaimers: No, they're not ours. But together we are strong. Mighty. Mark our words: Someday. (And then we'll whip Mulder's sweet ass the way he deserves....)  
Spoilers: Yeah, OK, spoilers for The End. So sue us.  
Rating: NC-17. Alicia wrote a smut-free Alex-fic, once. This ain't it. But because of Kate's and Te's intervention, the plot-to-smut ratio is much higher than it otherwise would be.  
Summary: Yet another The End/office fire fic. <vveg>

* * *

IGNITION  
by DB Kate, Alicia, and Te  
Please feed all of us: , ,   
.

~~~~~~~~~~

I smelled the smoke even before he entered the apartment.

The bitter remnants of fire were drifting toward me before the key finished turning in the lock, before the door swung open and Mulder walked in. I had my eyes on him and my hand on my gun, but I didn't plan on using it....

Not tonight.

Tonight I was just waiting for the man.

Waiting for the inevitable. 

I was also waiting for Mulder's usual greeting of rage and threats, those sweet snarls and that strange and wonderful feeling of his hands around my throat, but I was to be disappointed. He saw me, of course; saw me the second he entered--sprawled on his couch, a ridiculous creation of cracked leather and dust, in the dusk of the dim hotel room he calls his apartment. His apartment, not his home; I knew his home was somewhere else, in a basement sanctuary, tucked safely away, nestled down, hidden from the traitorous offices above him. 

And I knew his home had just burned down.

I wasn't surprised; it was bound to happen ... no, it was definitely *going* to happen; it had always been simply a question of when. His office had been Nero's playground, fiddles screaming about it, ever since the day he opened that first cabinet, sharpened that first pencil. They'd always planned to burn him someday, burn him alive, and, somehow, somewhere, in the back of that amazing mind, he knew it. Knew it all along.

That's why Mulder fears fire. He fears it with everything he is.

But Mulder has good luck with fire, whether he knows it or not.

I'd take a bet that he could walk through it if he had to, without singeing a hair on his head. 

But just then he was looking at me ... straight into my eyes.

And I could tell that he saw nothing.

He was stumbling, lurching past me as I stood, not even acknowledging my intrusion. 

I heard sobbing.

"Listen to me," I said, stepping back in front of him.

He held his hands up, silently showed them to me and I winced at the sight of them. They were burnt, badly, raw and angry blisters seared across the palms. Oh, the idiot, I thought furiously. He'd obviously tried vainly to open the cabinets, rescue his life's work, and the blazing steel refused him admittance. Oh, the fool....

The poor fool.

His walk through this fire had cost him and I wasn't sure he would let me pay him back.

"Fuck you, Krycek," he gasped against my shoulder, feebly trying to get by me to the bathroom. "Fuck you and all that you are."

"I didn't start the fire, Mulder," I replied mildly as I let him pass, but as always, I suppose I was lying. 

It's true, I didn't set the blaze, and the man who did was as much Mulder's friend as mine, but what did that matter? We were all guilty, in some way, even Mulder himself, of instigating the ashes that were left scattered throughout that basement, the smoking remains of deception. 

But he wasn't listening; he just slid to a seat on the cold bathroom tiles and rubbed his eyes with his wrists, a child-like gesture that made my heart stop, if only for a second. 

"What is it now, Krycek?" he finally said with exhaustion. "What do you want?"

His tone was so tired, so matter-of-fact, I was almost insulted. I was used to a little more ... enthusiasm ... in my encounters with him. It was pointless to dwell on my disappointment, though. "It's not a matter of what *I* want, Mulder."

"Stop fucking with me, Krycek. I'm not in the mood."

I bit back the retort that tried to escape, a task made even harder by the fact that I knew he could see my mouth working on the words. He was daring me to challenge him, the bastard. That was always the way with us, that sort of rat-tat-tat byplay that always fucking pissed me off in the old movies Mama sucked down with her sloe gin fizzes and sugar cookies. 

"Well? Spit it out, *Alex*."

"Did it crumble in your hands, Mulder? Charcoal and ash greasing your fingers--"

"Stop!"

I sucked in a breath at the obscenely naked hurt in his eyes. Picking our scabs again ... raw meat and tender wounds. We know each other too well and not at all and it's always been too goddamn easy to do this. It might've been different, once. All that tension between us. But we'd never been able to make it work ... never found ourselves on quite the same page. I regretted rejecting his chilled fumblings in that cell. I know he knew that. What did he regret? I shook off my thoughts and reached for the CD-ROM in my jacket, tossed it lightly on the bath mat beside him. He didn't say anything for a long moment, just stared. Gradually I saw his face twist and warp, nostrils flaring, flush rising....

"You had these all along?" he said, in a towering rage, and I was rather pleased at the change. "All my files ... my work..."

"Of course." I smiled back. "All of us did."

"Us?" he howled. "US? Who is US? You fucking little--"

"Stop and think, Mulder. Information is power, and the X files hold more importance than can possibly be imagined. You don't really think we ... anyone ... would allow the only copies to be paper in some pissant little basement, do you? The man you call Cancer Man is sending you a message."

He snorted then, and I could see that it was sinking in. "Does this mean he doesn't love me anymore?"

"I never claimed the man had taste, Mulder."

He chuckled then, and it turned into a rasping cough. I couldn't decide whether or not to pat him on the back, and by the time I made a move he'd settled. I was left there, hand outstretched and dangling, useless. The look in his eyes had changed to something unreadable and, with a wince, he grasped my forearm and used it to pull himself standing again.

"I need a shower."

I didn't mind his scent, actually. It reminded me of school... drunken nights in the woods with a bonfire raging, flimsy plastic cup dribbling cheap American beer on my hand, yelling drunken chants to the moon before stumbling further into the trees.... It didn't happen *every* time, but now and again one of those oh-so-smart hetboys would follow me. I'd pretend to be surprised at the extra hand on my cock, pulling and stroking me desperately while mud-stiffened jeans humped my ass blindly and oh, sometimes the wind would blow so cold and the shiver the wetness of tears on my neck would rip out my own orgasm and then it was back to the beer and the ostentatiously tipsy little girls who'd blame it all on whiskey dick in the cold morning light ... but I suppose Mulder would never understand the affection.

I just nodded at him and made to leave the room, but his hand tightened. I gazed at the hand for a moment, soot staining the pale flesh. I knew it had to hurt to grasp me at all, much less to do it with the kind of force he was using now. I could feel the swollen flesh of his palm hot against my arm.

"What is it, Mulder?"

Smoke and stale coffee and need ... that's what he tasted of when he kissed me. There was nothing of subtlety here, just the fumbling search for something simple between us. Comfort sex? I could do that. I responded the way I knew he wanted me to. Fierce, decisive thrusts with my tongue to open him wider, to give him something sweet he could surrender to, if only for a moment. He moaned then and I felt a whisper of that chill breeze again before reminding myself that no matter what Mulder might be, he wasn't a macho frat boy whose idea of a fun Saturday night involved either date rape or queerbashing or preferably both.

Pulling myself firmly back to the present, I turned away just long enough to start the water running, then reclaimed his mouth before moving my hand to the buttons of his shirt. By the time we were undressed, the water was hot and he moved under the stream with no resistance. He hissed as the water hit the raw flesh of his palms, but didn't shrink from the pain, instead turning the wounds upwards, letting the water blast them clean.

I could see he wasn't going to be able to wash his hair, so I fumbled at the shampoo, thankful for flip-top bottles. He stood unmoving as I worked the gel into a lather, but when my fingers started massaging the back of his skull his head tipped forward, resting on my shoulder as if I were the only thing holding him upright. And maybe I was.

The ash flowed off his body in rivulets, rosy skin appearing as the grime trickled away. I moved him into the spray to rinse the suds from his hair, lifting his face to keep the soap out of his eyes. As he shuffled forward our hips met and the lust that had been banked while I attended to his ablutions suddenly flared again. The hazel eyes that had been unfocused for so long suddenly snapped to attention, catching and holding mine. 

I broke first. I didn't want him to see what was in my eyes right then, but I know he probably did anyway. I focused on the steady beat of the pulse in his throat and reached for the soap. I'd had some practice with this, using the bar itself to create a lather, but have you ever tried to do that with one of those end-of-the-line bars?

Finally I gave up and settled for running my palm, the sliver of soap nestled in its center, gently over his body. Over the strong shoulders and down the arms; down his chest and those distracting abs; back up the column of his spine. I was so intent on not responding to the bounty before me that it took me a few moments to notice the slight roll of his hips. My sluggish brain was still processing that information when a slow, deliberate lick from chin to cheekbone suddenly set my whole body ablaze.

My body reacted before my brain could intervene. My head snapped back just far enough that I could focus on his eyes again, and then I was lost. Oh, there was fire there too. Fire that consumed me, burned away my self-control and sent me to my knees before him, to where I'd wanted to be ever since he'd walked in the door, since long before then. My arm wrapped like steel around his hips--not that he was struggling.

Some small, still-functioning part of my mind was rationalizing as hard and fast as possible. Comfort sex. I was doing this for Mulder, because *he* needed it. It was for *his* sake that I was greedily, frantically lapping at his balls, nipping at his hipbones, taking him into my mouth and throat as if my body needed him instead of oxygen to breathe.

For his sake that my nails dug into his left buttock as he bucked against me, for his sake that I was moaning against his flesh, sucking and swallowing and if my face was wet that was just the water from the shower, nothing more.

He cried out, something unintelligible, and slumped against me. I maneuvered him back, gently, until he was resting against the wall; then let him ease downward until he was sitting half-in, half-out of the spray. His eyes were closed, head aslant. He'd had a long day, and it looked as if all the adrenaline had finally run out. I let myself look, just for a second, trying to memorize the peaceful expression on his face so I could carry it with me as long as possible.

It's not easy to pull on clothes one-handed over a dripping wet body, but I managed it in record time; was out the door and out of earshot before he woke up.

Because I'm afraid of fire, too.

*****


End file.
